


Never Really Pretending

by ack



Series: Veronica x Jughead [4]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Cute, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Longest fic yet, Movie Watching, but works either way kinda, greys anatomy references, more comic canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10058261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ack/pseuds/ack
Summary: Veronica gets Jughead to pretend to date her to get Archie's attention in exchange for food, but things change.Veronica had the idea one day when Archie and Betty were on one side of the booth at Pops and Jughead on the other side. If she wanted to get Archie she would have to go through Jughead.





	

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr prompt;  
>  _"Hi,I read your short ff about Veronica and Jughead and I loved it,so wondered if is possible have something comic canon related ff about them and a little longer,please_

Veronica had the idea one day when Archie and Betty were on one side of the booth at Pops and Jughead on the other side. If she wanted to get Archie she would have to go through Jughead.

Her plan worked twofold, either she got Jughead to talk her up to Archie so he would like her more, or she would make Archie jealous.

Lucky for her, the spot she wants to sit is free. She waltzes over to the booth and slides in beside Jughead, depositing her purse on her lap.

“What are we talking about?” she asks the table, reaching for one of Archie’s fries. She notices Jughead watching the movement, protecting his own food.

“We were just splitting the bill,” Betty smiles, and Veronica instantly knows her angle.

She swallows her fry, “don’t worry about it,” she says, reaching into her purse, “I’ve got it,” she adds, planting her credit card on the table with an audible smack.

Jughead raises an eyebrow and both Archie and Betty light up.

“Thanks Ronnie!” they say in unison. Archie continues, “me and Betty were going to be late for our movie.”

Veronica’s eyes lock on where Archie is helping Betty up with a hand, and the two make for the door. Veronica watches as the pair leaves, then focuses her attention on Jughead.

He notices her watching him and slows the pace that he eats his burger.

“What,” he says, the word muffled by the food stuffed in his mouth.

Veronica makes a face of disgust, “ugh,” she moves to sit across from Jughead in the booth, and orders a malt to go when Pop comes over, then the bill.

She looks back at Jughead once more, his attention diverted to his lessening pile of food.

“Juggie,” she lays the charm on thick, and only gets one second of eye contact out of it.

She sighs before just getting out with it, “I have a proposition for you.”

Jughead looks less than amused, but takes a breath between his bites to lean back in the booth and listen.

There is a silence until Veronica’s malt arrives and she thanks Pop, paying, then waits for him to leave before continuing her conversation with Jughead.

“You know me and Betty often fight for Archie’s attention,” she starts, and Jughead’s expression changes to one that says, ‘duh.’ Then she resumes, “and I know you aren’t _my_ biggest fan,” Jughead is about to interject but she barrels on, “but I want you to pretend to date me, and in return I will pay for all of the food,” she finishes with a vague gesture for ‘all’.

At this final point Jughead raises both of his eyebrows, “how much is-,”

“All,” she sates, tilting her head to give him her serious gaze.

This gives Jughead something to think about, and Veronica knows it.

“Hmm,” Jughead feints thinking over it just to make Veronica sweat. It’s not like they aren’t friends, it’s just that they butt heads more than the others. It’s not the biggest price to pay, not at all, for unlimited food for a limited time.

Veronica rolls her eyes at him and grabs her purse and her malt. She is going to walk, or at least pretend to.

Right as she is moving to stand, he says, “yes,” and Veronica rolls her shoulders back.

“Knew it,” she beams, sipping from her malt, and now it’s his turn to roll his eyes.

“I want 2 pizza’s tonight, and we are hanging at your house. A princess like you probably has a movie room,” Jughead demands, and Veronica refuses to admit to herself that she doesn’t mind being called a princess. She is pretty regal.

“Done and done,” she extends her hand for a handshake, and Jughead raises his hand to show the grease from the burger. Veronica grimaces, “right, clean-up for tonight please, 7 o’clock,” she says, retracting her hand and beginning to walk away.

“You too!” Jughead shouts at her retreating figure.

She looks back over her shoulder with a scowl to see him smiling smugly.

-

Veronica has a spread of meats, cheese’s and fruits out in the movie lounge, plus two large meat-lover’s pizzas on the way by 6:57PM.

Currently, she is in her bedroom, checking herself out in the mirror. She knows she looks killer. Jughead may not appreciate it, but that doesn’t mean she can’t look good.

The doorbell rings and she quickly straightens out her dress and touches her neck to make sure her pearls are there before taking off down the stairs.

Smithers has already opened the door and Jughead is looking up at her with an expression she can’t explain, before he goes back to his neutral ‘I don’t care’ expression.

She descends the staircase slowly, maintaining eye contact, until Jughead breaks.

“Where’s the food?” he asks, sounding bored.

Veronica finishes her descent of the stairs, then walks towards the movie room.

“This way Jug,” she replies without turning her head. She can hear him huff, then the shuffling of feet that indicates he is doing as she says.

She opens the door to the movie room with a grand sweeping arm, and waits for Jughead’s reaction.

She isn’t disappointed.

He jumps at the food immediately, plowing through the meats then making his way through the cheeses of France.

If her timing is right…

“Your pizzas, Miss Lodge,” Smithers comes through the doorway to hand them to her. She gives her thanks and is immediately relieved of the pizzas by Jughead grabbing them and jumping on the couch.

“Your half of the bargain is complete,” he announces as Smithers leaves and closes the door. Veronica joins Jughead on the opposite side of the couch, turning on the big screen.

“So I get to choose what we watch?” she asks, hopeful. All she really wants to do is start the new season of Grey’s Anatomy, which she wouldn’t be able to get away with on a _real_ date.

Jughead nods, gesturing to the screen, “go ahead.”

Veronica pulls up Netflix and scrolls over to Grey’s Anatomy, and notices a change in Jughead’s posture.

“What is it?” she asks, “is the pizza the wrong one?” she will kick that pizza guys –

“No, it’s just,” Jughead closes the lid of the pizza, which, that is new. He points at the screen, “you’re 2 seasons behind me,” he completes his thought with a smug grin and Veronica balks.

She doesn’t know where to start with what she’s thinking. He not only watches her binge show, but _he is ahead of her?_

He waits for her response for a moment, but realizes he isn’t going to get one.

“We can still watch from where you are now,” he says, reopening his pizza box, “you will just need to watch more in between out dates,” he says nonchalantly, taking a bite of his slice. With his mouth full of food, he adds, “I’ll wait.”

-

From then on it becomes a thing. Every few days Jughead comes over to watch some Grey’s Anatomy with her and she provides the food.

When she is watching on the other days to catch up to where he is, she sometimes texts him about what’s happening in the episode and he replies with little comments that usually foreshadow what is going to happen in the episode.

After two weeks, Veronica is only eight episodes away from catching up to Jughead and texts him to tell him she is going to watch all of them on Saturday to lead up to their ‘date-not-date’ on Saturday night.

**Are you serious?**

Is his reply, which only causes Veronica to laugh and type back

**Yes!**

She tosses her phone in her purse and makes her way downstairs to the office to tell her dad she is heading out. It’s Friday now and she’s going out for dinner with Betty.

“I’m leaving dad,” she sing-songs, and he looks up from his work.

“Out to Pops with Betty, right?” he asks, and she nods, then he looks back to his work for the next question, “you two going shopping tomorrow?” because usually that is what she would be doing.

“No, just staying home,” she says with a smile, and he looks up with a little bit of disbelief.

“Does this have anything to do with Jughead coming over all of the time now?” he asks, and Veronica huffs, “what is this, a quiz? Yes, daddy, technically-,”

“As long as it’s not that Archie, he wrecks everything he touches,”

“But Jughead and I-,”

“Have my blessing, now go on, don’t let me keep you,” he gestures for hr to leave with a flick of his hand and she backs out of the room, shocked.

She knew she was trying to fool Archie, but her dad? At least it worked, although possibly too well.

-

She gets into a similar conversation with Betty when they are chatting over their burgers.

“You and Jughead have been hanging out a lot,” Betty comments, giving Veronica the side-eye.

Veronica sighs, “and you would have thought Archie would have noticed by now,” she says, aggressively grabbing a fry and biting it.

“Oh he has,” Betty says, alarmed that the raven-haired vixen didn’t know. At the sight of Veronica’s confusion, she elaborates, “Jughead told him and Archie gave his blessing. ‘Two of my closest friends,’ he said,” imitating Archie with a poorly-done male voice.

Veronica instantly feels infuriated. Jughead betrayed her trust, and now Archie thinks she’s taken. She doesn’t know which she feels worse about.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” she slaps a twenty on the table and moves to get out of the booth they are in.

“Ronnie,” Betty reaches for her, but she grabs Betty’s hand and lowers it back to the table gently.

“I’m sorry Betty, rain-check on this one, I’ll text you,” she says before she leaves, grabbing her phone from her bag.

**Tomorrow is cancelled, asshat**

She sends to Jughead, then silences her phone while stalking out of the Shoppe.

-

When she gets home she thinks about giving up Grey’s Anatomy entirely, then has another idea.

She sits on her bed with her laptop open and makes it through 2 bags of popcorn and 3 episodes before the urge to check her phone is too much.

She sits up and reaches to where she threw her phone at the edge of the bed and unlocks it.

**12 missed texts, 2 missed calls.**

There are 4 texts from Betty, 8 texts from Jughead, and 2 calls from Jughead.

She sighs and checks Betty’s first, claiming to herself that it’s willpower, and puts her phone on vibrate.

**Betty**

**Here for you if you need me <3**

**Text me if you need a bud :)**

**Jughead is wondering why you cancelled on him? You may want to get back to him**

**I told him what I told you btw**

Veronica loves how much Betty is here for her, but Betty can be too nice. Veronica wanted Jughead to suffer and figure it out for himself that she didn’t appreciate him using her for food, but Betty just _had to help_.

She decides to check Jughead’s messages first before responding.

**Jug**

**Why?**

**Is something wrong? U okay?**

**???**

**_~missed call~_ **

**V did I do something?**

**I don’t think I did??**

**Asshat is a good one btw**

**I’m asking Betty**

**_~missed call~_ **

**Call me when you read this please**

Veronica checks her voice messages, and the first voice message is quick, “that’s cool, I think we can work on better nicknames for each other, just get back to me when you can, bye.”

Veronica feels a little guilty at seeing how worried Jughead is, but then remembers that he never told her that Archie gave them his _blessing._

She nearly chucks the phone across the room at just that thought, then takes a deep breath and puts the phone back up to her ear. The second voice message is longer, “Veronica, Betty told me what she told you about what I said to Archie and what he said back to me. I didn’t think it mattered to you, and I never… I knew you wanted Archie’s attention, but I thought – y’know maybe – that maybe that had changed since you and Arch haven’t been hanging out but we-,” **beep** **beep.** The message was too long.

Veronica collapses back on the bed, phone on her stomach, as thoughts run through her mind.

She hasn’t been hanging out with Archie much, has she? She’s been at school, cheerleading, shopping, or watching Grey’s Anatomy either with or while texting Jughead. She hasn’t really missed hanging out with Archie either. He’s not a bad guy, they are great friends, but it became more of a challenge against Betty than anything else, and it shows with how she feels towards Archie now.

If she thinks about it, she feels nothing.

Nothing for Archie anyways.

She’s mad at Jughead for losing her trust, but he didn’t think of what he did as wrong, and he –

Her phone starts to buzz in her lap.

She checks who it’s from – **Jughead.**

Shit shit shit.

She takes a deep breath. In. Out.

“Hello,” she says, and hits herself on the head when she can hear the nerves in her voice. Get it together, you are Veronica Lodge.

_“Hi, Veronica,”_

“Jughead,”

_“I’m sorry if it was wrong to keep that from you,”_

“I can’t say I’m not disappointed,”

_“You’re not mad?”_

Veronica waits and thinks about saying yes, yes she’s mad, but really she’s just relieved.

“No, not really, because,” she sighs and presses her hand to her forehead, “as much as I hate to admit it you’re right.”

Jughead makes a pleased noise on the other end of the line and Veronica can tell he is smug from here.

“But no garlic fingers tomorrow, you’ve lost that privilege,” she proclaims.

 _“Tomorrow?”_ Jughead almost sounds hopeful.

“Yes,” Veronica says, and now it’s her turn to feel smug, knowing Jughead wants to come over, “and no more pretend dates,” she adds, wanting finality.

Jughead guffaws over the phone, _“as if they were ever pretend,”_ Veronica huffs indignantly, _“All the ladies want me,”_ he says with a laugh, and everything is almost back to normal.

Or whatever their new normal is.

+

Jughead walks into the movie room with the pizzas he took from Smithers in the foyer. He enters to see Veronica on the verge of tears watching the end of the episode that is right before the one he is on, clutching a bucket of popcorn.

He walks around the couch to sit beside Veronica, placing the pizza box on his other side.

“This isn’t even the worst part of it,” he says to her, throwing an arm around her shoulders and grabbing a slice with his free hand.

They watch as the horribly injured man writes 007 in Meredith’s hand, seeing the realization dawn on the character’s face, then on Veronica’s

“No!” she yells at the screen throwing a handful of popcorn at it.

“Hey hey,” Jughead says softly, and Veronica turns to look at him. He leans over, “no need to waste perfectly good food,” he says as he grabs a handful of her popcorn.

She wipes a tear and smacks him on the arm as he smiles at her through his mouthful of food, muffling his laugh.

She smiles back at him because of the ridiculousness of him, and they enjoy the night with some new episodes of Grey’s, starting a new thing of their own.

**Author's Note:**

> all of my drabbles are first posted on my tumblr!  
> riverdalehighvixens.tumblr.com  
> I do prompts for all ships of riverdale <3  
> Ships for drabbles and small fics are sorted into series based on that ship


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